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Do this nation proud, Mr Modi, heal it, build it and be true to your word

May 17, 2014 14:42 IST

'You have a chance to use this massive mandate to push through life changing reforms, transform India into a superpower because our nation's biggest strength are its people, and we the people are the most hardworking industrious and entrepreneurial the world has ever seen.'

'Arm us with a society which lives without fear, a governance where business can be conducted smoothly without greasing palms, instill in this great nation a sense of pride once again. Let this nation be bigger than you and the party.'

Suparn Verma's impassioned appeal to Narendra Modi.

And so it is over.

A passionately fought election where people openly took sides, debated and campaigned.

The Aam Aadmi Party fought a brilliant campaign with no money, the BJP fought a brilliant campaign with lots of money, the Congress just spent a lot of money trying to promote Rahul Gandhi.

The best takeaway for me after the election is that we finally have ended coalition governments after 1984 and ended the cycle of political skullduggery and compromises and stalemates that came with it.

Hopefully, the dynastic rule of the Gandhi family has come to an end and Congressmen, instead of laying itself at their feet and mercy, start to think deep and hard and create a better leader and policies to contest the next elections.

UPA-2 with its absolutely brazenly arrogant ways, inept paralytic government and scam-ridden tenure was sure to lose. It was just a matter of how badly.

The arrogance and plain stupidity of the Congress party is such that they failed to recognise that India is the youngest country in the world, India's youth are an ambitious lot, and they really don't care about prostrating in front of the Gandhi family as their mai-baap.

They do realise when you take a man like Manmohan Singh and then Sonia Gandhi remote controls him while prepping her son who has never served under any post and whose gaffes are now legendary memes and t-shirt slogans and drinking games.

Even its worst critics will agree that AAP helped break the UPA vote bank in a major way. It is a young party with great ideals and in time will be a force to be reckoned with, but for now it needs to introspect as well as reshuffle itself and infuse newer blood and do more work and less drama.

In a sign that there is justice but ironic, Mayawati's party did not win a single seat, the Samajwadi Party was routed, yet at the same time the scam-tainted Ashok Chavan won the Congress one of two seats in Maharashtra and the 'go-to-Pakistan' BJP contestant Giriraj Singh won his seat from Nawada.

India has been boiling over for years now and that anger was tapped into a shrewd campaign by Narendra Modi who not just sidelined the entire old guard of the BJP and their ambitions, but won a landslide majority for his party with all his ghosts of human rights violations and controversies.

The nation has a short memory, they have forgotten the scams during NDA rule just the way they turned a blind eye to the 1984 riots and voted in the Congress government with a thumping majority. What happened next is now history.

The Congress has been a lost cause for years now, the AAP is earnest and will be a force to be in times to come but are now too wet behind the ears. I have my beef with the BJP, but here they are -- in an absolute majority.

I may not have voted for you Mr Modi, but this nation has, a lot of my friends and colleagues have. I may not be on your team, but I am on Team India and everyone who has voted for you is on the same team and I hope at the end of the day that is the team you are on.

India is hoping for you to deliver and after two decades we do not have a logjam created by keep-every-party-in-the-coalition happy, we don't even have an Opposition to speak of in Parliament anymore.

I have a lot of fears and I am not alone.

Fear causes paralysis, fear also causes lack of trust, I hope Mr Modi that you will instill faith in our hearts and unite this nation that has fought bitterly for you and against you because at the end of the day every citizen of this country has the same dream and aspirations.

At the end of the day we the voters are in the same boat. If you do well, everyone is happy -- the ones who voted for you and the ones who did not. If you fail us, we will all suffer.

You have won big, but you will be bigger in your humility.

You have a chance to use this massive mandate to push through life changing reforms, transform India into a superpower because our nation's biggest strength are its people, and we the people are the most hardworking industrious and entrepreneurial the world has ever seen.

Arm us with a society which lives without fear, a governance where business can be conducted smoothly without greasing palms, instill in this great nation a sense of pride once again. Let this nation be bigger than you and the party.

Pass human rights bills. Pass the Jan Lok Pal bill. Get rid of ASFPA. Pass the women rights bill, the police reform bill, the anti-torture bill, open up FDI reforms, have stronger ties with China to create a stronger political hemisphere.

Get rid of the bureaucracy and streamline processes to make life simple.

You may owe a great many favours to your patrons who funded you, but you owe much more to this nation where the millions of citizens who voted you to power, voted for you, not for your party. They look up to you and you owe it to them.

Look in their eyes because in yours they saw their dreams come true.

Mr Modi, I have my fundamental differences with you, but you are my Prime Minister and I will accord you that respect.

I will say this to you however; I hope you realise the chance you have got is one in a billion. You are the first prime minister of our country born after Independence, after 30 years you are the first prime minister without the burden of making other parties happy or bowing down to your party diktat.

You are a free man.

I have heard you are headstrong, I have heard you do what you think is right, I have heard you are a visionary, I have heard a great many things about you from friends who have fought for you.

I want to believe the visions I see reflected in their eyes, Mr Modi. I want to believe you are the man I saw through your mother's eyes when you went to meet her.

We are an emotional country; we are a country of dreamers, a young nation willing to be led.

Do this nation proud, Mr Modi, heal it, build it and be true to your word.

Suparn Verma is a well-known filmmaker and a member of the founding editorial team at Rediff.com